He would be worth no more than just that world was
worth. To that amount of result, with its mixed merits and defects,
his creative power could attain, but go no farther. And since there
is to be no future; since the whole value and meaning of the world
has been already paid in and actualized in the feelings that went
with it in the passing, and now go with it in the ending; since it
draws no supplemental significance (such as our real world draws)
from its function of preparing something yet to come; why then, by
it we take God's measure, as it were. He is the Being who could once
for all do THAT; and for that much we are thankful to him, but for
nothing more. But now, on the contrary hypothesis, namely, that the
bits of matter following their laws could make that world and do no
less, should we not be just as thankful to them? Wherein should we
suffer loss, then, if we dropped God as an hypothesis and made the
matter alone responsible? Where would any special deadness, or
crassness, come in? And how, experience being what is once for all,
would God's presence in it make it any more living or richer?
Candidly, it is impossible to give any answer to this question. The
actually experienced world is supposed to be the same in its details
on either hypothesis, "the same, for our praise or blame," as
Browning says.
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